The subject invention generally relates to computer-based retail services and, more particularly, relates to systems and method for using a social network to provide product related information.
In the art, systems and methods are generally known for presenting a user with information related to a product and/or service (hereinafter individually and collectively referred to as “product”). For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,072,884 describes that many retailers have their own e-commerce website to advertise, market, and sell their products. To assist the user in purchasing a product, the websites typically provide to a user information that is directly related to the product such as the product's brand, size, color, price, availability, and/or other product specifications. Due to a plethora of information, websites may include a search engine for the user to easily navigate to and locate a particular product and/or product information they desire.
As a further mechanism to assist a user in the purchase of a product, U.S. Pat. No. 7,478,054 describes a system that functions to notify a first user about a purchase made by a second user. To this end, the system functions to detect that the second user has purchased an item and to determine that the first user has a purchase notification relationship with the second user. The system then provides to the first user a notification, such as an email, that the second user has purchased the item.
Yet further, U.S. Pat. No. 6,092,049 describes a system that functions to actively recommend products to a user. For this purpose, the system utilizes collaborative filtering techniques to associate products with users having a particular user profile considering ratings given to products by users or inferred for users by the system. More particularly, profiles of users and product ratings are used to determine similarity factors with respect to users whereby a user within a determined set of similar users is recommended products that have been highly rated by other users within the set of similar users.
For still further directing a user to a product purchasing opportunity, U.S. Publication No. 2009/0187537 describes a system that assembles a set of documents for a user in response to a search query by the user considering a social network of the user. A respective person is identified with each of a group of documents in the set. For at least one document in the group, a chain of one or more links is found in the social network between the respective person and the user. In this manner, in response to a search request, a search results webpage is displayed which includes an identification of the at least one document together with a sequence of breadcrumbs corresponding to the one or more links in the social network chain between the user and the respective person.
While the systems and methods described in these exemplary publications, which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety, generally work for their intended purpose, the subject invention provides improvements thereto which improvements will become apparent from the descriptions that follow.